11/8/07

Often More people pronounce the t. Pronouncing the t used to seem obtrusive, trying to pad your part, like saying ‘orientate’ instead of ‘orient’. It sounded ignorant.

Orientate No, just … no.

Transitivity in verbs disappearing “Then when you hit Command+F, the Find dialog box displays” instead of “is displayed.” Everything is intransitive, now. I love this. It saves time and brain power for more important things like the counter-factual subjunctive.

The counter-factual subjunctive misplayed “If I were the King of England, I’d be invited out more.” sounds right, rather than “If I was the King of England” (which I’m not.)“I wish I had done something”, yes. “I wish I would have done something…”, no. This is just a clash of academic/literary (my home dialect) against vernacular.

ProcessesLook, the root word is not a greco-latin word that ends in '-is' so the plural is NOT pronounced PRO-cess-EEZ. Ouch. This is pseudo-learned, like people who know they don't know where to say 'me' or 'I', but they know that the high-toned thing they don't know about involves saying 'I'. So you get "Thanks for bringing Magel and I this lovely vahz." Ya just wanna go nukyular, n'omesayn?

Derivational suffix of fractions “It’s ten times smaller” replacing “It’s a tenth as big.” This is really grating and seems so know-nothing, ignoring that bigness is affirmative, something you can measure. Smallness in this sense is just the disappearance of bigness along a scale. 300% smaller Sorry that this is catching on, too. Evidently, there’s some shift at 100% in these peoples’ minds. If something was 10 and it’s 70% smaller, now it’s 3. Cool. If it was reduced 100%, it’s 0, nothing. So far, fine. But if it was 500% smaller, the new math is that it’s a fifth of what it was; 2 is 500% smaller than 10. I understand it, but it sticks in my math craw every time.

Mourning adverbsWhat happened to things happening "daily" instead of "on a daily basis"? I think this is the "more syllables, more honor" school of declamation.